At a time of growing concern regarding platform power, what kinds of claims can we make to access platform data? How can we ensure that the digital world can be independently knowable and interrogated and that this ability is equitably distributed? If we allow access, how do we protect privacy and confidentiality? How do these questions fit within a broader set of concerns regarding the social and democratic value of data, data colonialism, data justice, and epistemic justice?
This special hybrid workshop, cohosted by the Institute for Rebooting Social Media (RSM) at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center and the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (SRI), brings together a diverse and interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners to discuss recent initiatives to address these questions and place them within a broader critical context.
Many jurisdictions are starting to address the issue of access to platform data. For example, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes obligations on “very large online platforms” and “very large online search engines” to share data with researchers and regulators. The proposed US Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (PATA) and Canada’s proposed Online Harms Act would also require access for researchers.
Join SRI Associate Director (on leave) and RSM Visiting Scholar Lisa Austin and Nadah Feteih, RSM Employee Fellow and Tech Policy Fellow with the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, as they host a variety of speakers across three main sessions including: Data Access and Social Media Research, Implementation Challenges, and Justice and the Right to Information.
This event is hybrid, offering in-person and online programming.
Venue
Berkman Klein Center
1557 Massachusetts Ave 4th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA
About Lisa Austin
Lisa Austin is the Chair of Law and Technology and a professor in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law. Austin is a faculty affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society where she also serves as an associate director (currently on leave). Austin was previously a co-founder of the IT3 Lab at the University of Toronto, which engaged in interdisciplinary research on privacy and transparency. Her research focuses on legal theory as well as law and technology. Austin’s extensive privacy work has been cited numerous times by Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada. In 2017, Austin received a President’s Impact Award from the University of Toronto. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Institute for Rebooting Social Media.
About Nadah Feteih
Nadah Feteih is an employee fellow at the Institute for Rebooting Social Media. She holds BS and MS degrees from UC San Diego in computer science with a focus on systems and security. Her background is in privacy and trust & safety, working most recently as a software engineer at Meta on Messenger privacy and Instagram privacy teams. She was promoted to senior software engineer within two years and was involved in various integrity workstreams at the company, escalating content moderation issues and bringing awareness to bias in product features and enforcement systems. Feteih is also the founder of Muslim Women in Tech and has done prior work at Meta in consulting and building features for the Faith team. She is currently a tech policy fellow with the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and is driven to use her technical expertise and expand her knowledge in ethics, policy, and integrity through her work at RSM.
About the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society,
The Berkman Klein Center's mission is to explore and understand cyberspace; to study its development, dynamics, norms, and standards; and to assess the need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions. The Institute for Rebooting Social Media (RSM), situated within the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, is a three-year, “pop-up” research initiative to accelerate progress towards addressing social media’s most urgent problems, including misinformation, privacy breaches, harassment, and content governance. By convening participants across industry, government, civil society, and academia in focused, timebound collaboration, the Institute has a portfolio of research, projects, programming, and educational opportunities aimed at improving the state of digital social spaces.
About the Schwartz Reisman Institute
Located at the University of Toronto, the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society’s mission is to deepen our knowledge of technologies, societies, and what it means to be human by integrating research across traditional boundaries and building human-centred solutions that really make a difference. The integrative research we conduct rethinks technology’s role in society, the contemporary needs of human communities, and the systems that govern them. We’re investigating how best to align technology with human values and deploy it accordingly. The human-centred solutions we build are actionable and practical, highlighting the potential of emerging technologies to serve the public good while protecting citizens and societies from their misuse. We want to make sure powerful technologies truly make the world a better place—for everyone.
Lisa Austin
Nadah Feteih